Last year, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein lied that Obama adviser Samantha Power "gave an interview in 2008 where she wanted to bring a mammoth protection force -- pay attention -- to the Palestinian territories." In fact, Power was not advocating an invasion of Israel, as Klein suggested; rather, her reference to a "mammoth protection force" was in response to a hypothetical question about a move toward geoncide by "one party or another" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the size of the peacekeeping force that would be needed to stop a genocide from happening.

Now that Power has been selected to White House Atrocities Prevention Board , Klein is back to lie about Power some more, this time upping the ante by smearing her as "anti-Semitic." Klein writes in an April 24 article that "Power was referring to pro-Israel groups using language some would consider anti-Semitic by implying such groups maintain inordinate power in U.S. politics."

At no point, however, does Klein identify what the purportedly anti-Semitic "language" is that Power used, or who the "some" is that would consider it so.

MRC Still Trying to Discredit Media Study It Disagrees WithTopic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is still trying to quash a media-bias study that contradicts its right-wing agenda.

In an april 25 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd denounced a Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism arguing that President Obama has actually received more negative news coverage this political season than the Republican presidential primary contenders, insisting that "the data examined by the study are fundamentally flawed and hence worthless to arrive at a conclusion about the media's judgments of the candidates." The rest of Shepherd's post is a copy-and-paste of a Rich Noyes post attacking the study.

But as we noted, the MRC attacking the Pew study for purportedly faulty methodology is laughable given the shoddy state of the MRC's own research methodology, which is designed to advance a political agenda around a pre-existing narrative rather than following where the data actually leads.

The "liberal media bias" the MRC tends to treat as axiomatic is actually driven by the MRC's own deliberately skewed research, aswe'vedocumented.

NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Zombie LiesTopic: WorldNetDaily
WND was busted long ago for spreading falsehoods about President Obama, yet it continues to peddle those very same lies years later. Read more >>

WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi despises Barack Obama so much that he has shown no reluctance to plunging into the sleaziest sewers of Obama derangement. He started moving this direction last year by darkly hinting that Obama is secretly gay. Now, Corsi has taken the full plunge at WND by trying to rehabilitate Larry Sinclair.

If you'll recall, in 2008 WND enthusiastically embraced Sinclair's tale that he once did drugs and had sex with Obama, despite the facts that no corroborating evidence was presented to back up his claims and WND itself made no effort whatsoever to check him out. WND quietly backed away from Sinclair after he failed lie-detector tests, he turned out to be a convicted crimina,l and he held a press conference one observer called "the single most stupefying event on any single day, what with the diversity of inanity on display from coast to coast in an election year," complete with a kilt-wearing attorney who justified his wardrobe decision by discussing the size of his "male genitalia."

But never mind all that -- Corsi needs more excuses to hate Obama, and Sinclair will serve just nicely.

In an April 24 WND article, Corsi writes that a libel case was dismissed against Sinclair by a man who claimed Sinclair ruined him by claiming in a book that Obama adviser David Axelrod had agreed to pay the man $750,000 to rig the results of Sinclair's polygraph test. Corsi makes sure to put inhis lead paragraph that Sinclair has made the "sensational charge that he had sex and used drugs with the future president," but it's not until the final paragraph of his 27-paragraph article that Corsi mentions that Sinclair has a "criminal past."

The libel suit has no direct link to Sinclair's allegations about Obama -- which still lack substantiation -- yet Corsi is seizing on it to portray Sinclair as credible.

This is little more than carpet-munching on Corsi's part. There apparently is no depth too low for him to indulge his Obama derangement.

Christopher Ruddy's salute aside, it appears that Newsmax is not quite ready to give up on Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign.

An April 24 article by Paul Scicchitano in an interview with Gingrich in which the candidate repeats his usual attacks on Mitt Romney and plays down the near-impossibility of Gingrich actually winning the nomination.

While acknowledging that "Gingrich lost Tuesday's Delaware primary — where he had spent a significant amount of time campaigning and had hoped to win," Scicchitano also portrays Gingrich as an "underdog" who faces "funding challenges," suggesting he still has a chance.

But then, Newsmax turned its news operation into a hypemachine for Gingrich for much of of December and January, so it's probably not a surprise that Newsmax is still clinging to the idea of Gingrich as a president.

Left to the devices of the Republican Party and its nominee, Barack Obama is a shoo-in for re-election, says Joseph Farah, editor and founder of WND.

But he does believe there is an opportunity to defeat Obama and, equally importantly, restore the nation to constitutional integrity in 2012.

“There’s a problem even bigger than Obama afflicting America,” he says. “And that means it is a huge, monumental, fundamental crisis, because Obama, given another four years in office, will effectively destroy the very fabric of everything good that set America apart from the rest of the world. That problem is we have no more anchor for self-government, the rule of law and governance through the will of the people. The Constitution is being rendered meaningless.”

Farah says the way to accomplishing both goals – defeating Obama and restoring constitutional integrity – is through making the case, directly to the American people, that Obama is not constitutionally eligible, a position already held by a shockingly high percentage of Americans, given the blackout of the issue by most of the media.

Of course, the reason "most of the media" ignores this story is because it's a sham, ginned up by Farah and Co., just like he did in the 1990s with the claim that Vince Foster was murdered, and for the same purpose -- to try and delegitimize a president he opposes.

Thank you, Mr. Farah, for declaring that not only do you have no interest in fair and balanced journalism or even the facts, you will be turning WND into a propaganda machine dedicated almost exclusively to trying to destroy President Obama. Years back, Farah declared himself an activist and not a journalist, so let's not pretend he's anything but a craven, hate-filled partisan.

Here's where the PAC part comes in. Farah needs money in a hurry -- lots of money:

“For years now I have been promoting a billboard campaign on the birth certificate question,” Farah reminded. “We have erected hundreds of billboards around the country – first asking simply ‘Where’s the Birth Certificate?’ and later asking, ‘Where’s the Real Birth Certificate?’ The first part of the plan calls for a massive and aggressive expansion of that program, which put the issue on the map when most media would not even entertain honest discussions of it. In order to do this, I need help – lots of help. I need financial support – much more than we have ever received in the past. I estimate it will take up to $1 million to plaster this message across the country so it cannot be ignored.

But that’s just the start, says Farah. If the campaign is successful enough, he wants to produce and air hundreds of television ads about the eligibility issue. If we can raise through grass-roots donations another $1 million by July, we can have those ads airing in major markets, on national TV and in battleground states to ensure Obama is so weakened by public doubt that his campaign can’t even overcome the crisis through voter fraud.

[...]

He acknowledges $2 million is a lot of money to raise quickly – but that’s what it’s going to take.

“There’s no sugar daddy out there who is going to do this for you,” says Farah. “Trust me on that. Donald Trump is not going to come to our rescue. You and I are going to have to dig deep into our pockets and sacrifice to find the financial resources to make this happen. I’m committed to doing my part to spread the truth. I don’t think anyone can doubt that after the abuse I’ve endured for the last four years. The only question is how many others will help with contributions of $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $1,000, $5,000 or more. We’re not going to get any stimulus money from Obama to make this happen. But this could be America’s last chance to take a stand for what is right, truthful and honest. If you stand with me on this, please make your donation today. Let’s defeat Obama and restore the Constitution in 2012.

When Donald Trump thinks you're too crazy, that may be a sign that you're too crazy.

But sanity isn't the point -- money is. This is nothing but a grab for cash done in the most cynical way possible. And don't expect that Farah will ever provide any accountability to his donors for how that money he's begging for is spent, and he certainly isn't promising to do so here. He doesn't have that kind of integrity.

If Farah was truly committed, he'd borrow the money himself. Instead, the money from his gullible donors may very well line his own pockets. You'll see WND report on John Woodman's birther debuking before he'll publicly document how that money was spent.

Given that, why would anybody trust Farah and WND with their cash? We can't imagine how.

You know Dan Gainor as the Media Research Center apparatchik (and T. Boone Pickens Fellow) who loyally spouts right-wing talking points. It's probably not a surprise that he would parrot the MRC's anti-gay agenda as well.

After it came out that Mitt Romney had hired as his national security spokesman Richard Grennell, Gainor managed to find something wrong with that: Grennell is gay. So he decided to tap into his inner Bryan Fischer and and pick Twitter fights with anyone who disagreed with him by ranting about how it wasn't "conservative" for Romney to do such a thing, as Slate's David Weigel documents.

Never mind, of course, that not even Gainor appears to be disputing Grennell's qualifications on national security -- heck, he's certainly right-wing enough, as demonstrated by Newsmax's crush on him. Grennell's sexual orientation is simply irrelevant to the job in question, but Gainor has decided to portray his hiring as a "move to the left." And as the Twitter chain demonstrates, Gainor refuses to address the logical conclusion drawn from his tweets: that conservatives should discriminate against gays in job preferences.

Curiously, Gainor has yet to bring any of this up at the MRC website. Is that because he knows that such blatant attacks on the presumptive Republican candidate are a big no-no at this point? Or is it because that such naked gay-bashing may not fly with even the MRC's conservative base?

AIM's Irvine Didn't Want His Child to Be Born on Earth DayTopic: Accuracy in Media

Earth Day coincides with the birth of one of the sons of Accuracy in Media director Don Irvine. And Irvine's not exactly happy about that. He details in an April 22 AIM blog post:

I will never forget Earth Day 1992, not just because it is my son’s birthday, but also because my wife chose that day to give birth. You see, she knew that she would have to have a C-section and her favorite doctor was only available on that day of that week to do the operation. I did try and discourage her from the April 22 date, since I really didn’t want a child born on Earth Day, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. And as I’ve learned, it is better not to argue with a pregnant woman.

MRC Unhappy That Another Pew Study Contradicts Its AgendaTopic: Media Research Center

Last fall, we noted how the Media Research Center tried to discredit a Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism because if offered evidence that ran contrary to the MRC's raison d'etre narrative that the media has a hopeless liberal bias.

Well, the PEJ has issued a new study -- this one claiming that coverage of President Obama has been "mostly negative," while Mitt Romney saw more positive coverage after he began winning more presidential primaries -- and the MRC is trying to discredit it again.

As he did previously, MRC research director Rich Noyes complains again in an April 23 NewsBusters post about PEJ's methodology:

But "the press" hasn't been tougher on Obama than the Republicans. PEJ's "good press/bad press" statistic mixes reports of the campaign horse race (who's ahead, who's behind) with judgmental coverage of a candidate's background, issue positions, etc. And, according to PEJ's own statistics, the vast majority of the reports they examined (they peg it at 64%) are about campaign strategy.

[Check out my earlier blog post for more explanation of the flaws in PEJ's methodology.]

What this all means is that the GOP candidates got better "good press" scores because they each won primaries this year. This is obvious when you look at the report's explanation of how Romney, Santorum and Gingrich each fared with "the press" (I'm stripping out the statistics, because they are a meaningless distraction):

[...]

In other words, PEJ is not actually tracking how the press -- journalists, reporters, commentators, etc. -- are evaluating, ranking, spinning, etc., the campaign. Their sample is so heavy with redundant Web posting of the same horse race results that it completely masks the spin that journalists impart to the coverage.

Think about it this way: Can any serious media observer argue that the media elite have been more positive towards Christian conservative Rick Santorum than Barack Obama? On its face, this study is not measuring what it purports to measure, i.e., the tone of campaign journalism.

Undoubtedly, given the resources they've put into this project, you'll see additional reports throughout the campaign year. If President Obama takes a polling lead over Mitt Romney, you'll see PEJ claim a burst of good press for the Democrat; if Romney takes the lead, they'll continue to say that the press is beating up on Obama. Don't believe it.

Noyes offer no evidence whatsoever to back up his assertions -- perhaps because the MRC's methodology tends to be so shoddy and so ridiculously stacked. For instance, it judged the political slant of questions at Republican debates hosted by CNN and NBC -- but not debates hosted by Fox News.

Unlike the MRC, which mostly limits itself to bashing the three TV networks and ignoring Fox News completely, the PEJ study examines pretty much all media outlets -- more than 11,000 according to the study, along with a smaller breakout of a sample of 52 key news outlets.

Further, if Noyes was the "serious media observer" he claims to be, he wouldn't be tossing around terms like "media elite" in such a pejorative way. The work of Noyes and the MRC is simply too agenda-driven to be taken seriously beyond the political activists it's intended to motivate. That's not research, that's propaganda.

The MRC starts with a conclusion -- the media has a liberal bias -- and finds evidence to back it up. PEJ, by contrast, follows the evidence wherever it goes.

Josh St. Louis parrots Noyes' complaints in an April 24 NewsBusters post bashing MSNBC's Martin Bashir for noting the "faulty" Pew study. He goes on to huff: "It's unfortunate that a division of Pew devoted to "excellence in journalism" uses such flimsy methodology to argue against the clear liberal media bias present in campaign coverage."

There are "serious media observers" out there, but they sure don't work for the MRC.

We know WorldNetDaily has an anti-gay agenda, so it's no surprise to see WND run to the defense of Pat Boone and his gay-bashing remarks. And that's exactly what Drew Zahn does in an April 22 WND article reporting on the controversy of Boone being selected as a commencement speaker for Adrian College, a small college in Ohio.

Critics have pointed out Boone's statement in a 2008 WND column that "there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists." But Zahn insists that doesn't mean he was,you know, likening gays to terrorists:

Boone’s column specifically states that homosexual activists haven’t grown as violent as jihadi terrorists, but does point to “the anger, the vehemence, the total disregard for law and order … the hate seething in the words, faces and actions” of some of California’s Proposition 8 protesters, who took to the streets demanding the state’s voter-approved ballot initiative preserving marriage between one man and one woman be struck down.

“Hate is hate, no matter where it erupts,” Boone writes in the column’s pivotal paragraph. “And hate, unbridled, will eventually and inevitably boil into violence. How crazily ironic that the homosexual activists and sympathizers cry for ‘tolerance’ and ‘equal rights’ and understanding – while they spew vitriol and threats and hate at those who disagree with them on moral and societal grounds.”

Essentially rewriting a Toledo Blade article, which he cites but does not link to, Zahn notes that critics have also cited what he calls Boone's "willingness to question Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president and the legitimacy of the document the White House presented as Obama’s purported, long-form birth certificate." But the article also pointed out that Boone has also "claimed President Obama was born in Kenya," which he has -- but curiously, that part didn't make it into Zahn's article.

Boone, of course, has a long record of spewing hatred of Obama, gays, and others.

As might be expected from someone who turned his website into a hypemachine for Newt Gingrich, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy serves up a tribute to Gingrich's failed campaign in his April 19 column:

As the dust begins to quickly settle from the hotly contested Republican primary and Mitt Romney assumes the title of presumptive nominee, it’s important to recognize the role Newt Gingrich has played and will continue to play in helping the Republicans win the White House and Senate this fall.

The former House speaker recently told Newsmax in an interview that he remains in the race, not as a spoiler, but to play a key role promoting a conservative agenda at the Republican convention in Tampa in August. It’s a worthy goal – and I have no doubt that Newt will soon be officially supporting Mitt Romney to pursue that agenda.

Michael Reagan pointed out in a recent appearance on Fox News that Republicans must now unite behind Romney to defeat Obama and his liberal agenda. Considering the uphill battle we face, I couldn’t agree more.

And supporters of Gingrich and Santorum should keep in mind that the key goal now is to roll back the Obama agenda. We can only do that with a united front.

Though Newt failed to wrest the nomination, I believe he offered a very strong message that Mitt should tap into – a message that may have resonated even more strongly in the general election.

Today, Newt remains the great communicator of the Ronald Reagan vision of small government, strong national defense, low taxes, and individual freedom.

He also has a track record of accomplishment, acting as the key conservative figure behind the Contract with America, and a driving force behind the GOP’s congressional victories in 1995 and the first balanced federal budget in decades.

Newt is what I call a Big Picture Conservative. He grasps that the way out of our dire economic situation is not through tax increases or draconian spending cuts.

[...]

As a Big Picture Conservative Newt also grasps the powerful demographic changes underway in the country, especially how Hispanic-Americans and other ethnic minorities need to be embraced and made to feel at home in the Republican party. Today Americans of Hispanic and ethnic backgrounds tend to vote overwhelming Democratic.

Mitt should gravitate toward this Big Picture Conservatism. He has had a tremendous career in business and finance and a reputation as a can-do, problem solver. As governor of Massachusetts he held the record of vetoing the Democratic legislature there, demonstrating he has political courage as well.

Those virtues – coupled with a willingness to bring in the ideas of Big Picture Conservatives, people like Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, Larry Kudlow, Grover Norquist and Mike Reagan, to name just a few, will help him craft a positive, pro-growth message that will resonate with the American people come November 6th of this year.

Said like someone who provided a huge in-kind contribution to Gingrich's campaign in the form of wildly biased news coverage.

What Happened to the MRC's List of 'GCB' Offenses?Topic: Media Research Center

Apparently, the purported anti-Christian offenses in the TV show "GCB" have become too much for the Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson to count.

In the latest weekly installment of her "GCB"-bashing, Thompson complains about the show's twisted rendering of the 10 Commandments," but she makes no mention of the running list of offenses she has been documenting since the show began (at last count, the show has racked up 157 offenses).

Thompson has refused to publish this list in the past. Now, apparently, she's either reached the point where there are too many to document, or she has decided to disappear the list since she clearly has no intention of publishing it for the edification of her readers.

Either way, it's a bit of cowardice on Thompson's part. Given that the MRC frequently fails to provide readers with the raw data it uses to attack liberals, it's not surprising.

Remember when we wrote that WorldNetDaily would not cover the disbarment of Andrew Thomas, former Maricopa County attorney and doer of the bidding of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, until it had figured out how to spin things to minimize the damage to its biggest public-relations client? Well, WND figured out a way -- by letting Thomas spin things for himself.

In an April 21 article, Dave Tombers lets Thomas prattle on and on with self-aggrandizing blather about how he's the victim of a "witch hunt," as well as make charges of "a massive cover-up and, for me, genuinely a Dreyfus-like injustice."

Tombers makes sure to bury the details of Thomas' disbarment until the 33rd paragraph, filling most of the remainder with Thomas' blathering and rehashing the "more than 100 charges" Thomas brought against one Maricopa County supervisor, the malicious prosecution of whom was a key reason for his disbarment. Tombers also throws in some unsubstantiated charges he claims he's "learned":

WND has learned that as many as 11 county employees have been terminated in recent months for allegedly accepting bribes in a court tower construction scandal – one of the Thomas investigations that was stymied.

WND has also learned that the FDIC recently announced the loss of millions of dollars. There also are allegations that some $5.5 million was linked to county official Don Stapley, the subject of another Thomas investigation that was thwarted.

Tombers doesn't explain how he "learned" about this -- his article contains no substantive quotes from any source other than Thomas.

Tombers did a fine job of being a stenographer for Thomas (and, by extension, Arpaio) -- just another day for the Arpaio stenographers at WND.

We've documented how Terry Jeffrey is no longer even pretending his CNSNews.com is a "news" operation, turning it into an anti-Obama propaganda mill. He does it again in an April 18 article:

In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government’s debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56.

[...]

The $5,027,761,476,484.56 that the debt has increased during Obama's presidency equals $16,043.39 for every one of the 313,385,295 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.

As we noted the last time Jeffrey did this, there's no journalistic reason for Jeffrey to replace the perfectly functional (and stylistically correct, AP-wise) word "trillion" with the full number down the penny. That's a political judgment Jeffrey made solely to illustrate his right-wing, anti-Obama agenda.

Jeffrey is being dishonest in another way too. Suggesting that Obama polices are solely responsible for all debt accumulated under his presidency ignores the fact that the legacy of policies implemented make up much of that debt.

Mediaite notes that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, in an April 21 post, accused Bill Maher of telling a "racist joke about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman" for a quip in which a judge granted Zimmerman permission to kill off the hot new boy band One Direction.

Sheppard had to issue a correction because, it turns out, he had no idea who One Direction is:

Now, to be fair to Maher, my ignorance of boy bands was showing Saturday.

This article was originally titled “Bill Maher Curses Out Audience for Not Laughing at Racist Joke About Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.” I didn’t realize the HBO Real Time host was referring to the popular British-Irish singing group.

I thank the eagle-eyed NewsBusters reader Erik for bringing this to my attention via email, and apologize to Maher for accusing him of making a racist joke about Martin and Zimmerman.

Sheppard does have a habit of writing before thinking, such as defending Michael Savage's smears of children with autism and even whining that President Obama did an introduction to a broadcast of "To Kill A Mockingbird."